The original content is from another blog, but this excerpt is of particular interest ... Brad http://www.wisdomandwonder.com/link/2110/why-mit-switched-from-scheme- to-python
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It is sad :( But it is tendency of nowadays world to downgrade education of people. In Europe the same things are happening. Many of modern students even do not know how to deal with rational numbers without computer or calculator. I saw this myself, and was shocked. Some interesting points if view on this phenomena I've found in book "Dr John Coleman/ Committee of 300". It is rather paranoid book, but many thing happens according to what Coleman wrote in early 90-s. Vasil
On the other hand, more and more people are learning Haskell at the university. Though it aims at different things than Scheme, I do not consider this sad at all. I consider the teaching of any proper functional language (Lisp-based (without CLOS, eh), ML-based or Miranda-based) a good thing. But, python, bweh! (Yet, I had Scheme *and* VBA as a freshman. Both were cool, but I still preferred ASM at this time.) P! 2009/3/25 vasil <vasil.s.d@gmail.com>:
It is sad :(
But it is tendency of nowadays world to downgrade education of people.
-- We are the knights who say "bweh"!
2009/3/26 Adrien Piérard <pierarda@iro.umontreal.ca>:
On the other hand, more and more people are learning Haskell at the university. Though it aims at different things than Scheme, I do not consider this sad at all.
I consider the teaching of any proper functional language (Lisp-based (without CLOS, eh), ML-based or Miranda-based) a good thing.
But, python, bweh! (Yet, I had Scheme *and* VBA as a freshman. Both were cool, but I still preferred ASM at this time.)
P!
I'm glad to see this as well, and would go further and say that I'd much prefer to see students working with Python than spending almost the whole duration of their degree focusing on Java (like I did :/). They started teaching Haskell in 3rd year at least, but a year too late for me. I know one guy who is doing postgrad research who's using Python for the most part and praises its virtues in allowing him to throw together very interesting code quickly. If programming in it is faster than Java and it shares some good features with Lisp (e.g. a REPL!) then that's a good thing :) Oisín
I've recently taken an intro course in Scheme. A few people including myself already knew a bit of Scheme and found it easy (but pleased to be programming in Scheme of course :) I'd guestimate that a lot of people still didn't know how to use basic functional glue like map, foldl and partial by the end of the course. Moving on to Java a few people at least said they liked the Java more than Scheme! Really, I wouldn't mind if they moved that course to Python - not many people learn the value of functional programming when they've just written hello world, and anyone who would've enjoyed it will learn in their own time anyway. S-exprs give a benefit of macro-programming, but that isn't taught in an intro course. In the end a lot of people just get a wrongly negative impression of Scheme and might enjoy programming more if they started in Python. The one big big pitfall of teaching Python is in teaching those bad imperative habits, but as I said, few people learn to program functionally at that stage anyway, and those habits can be unlearned.
participants (5)
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Adrien Piérard -
Ali -
Bradley Lucier -
Oisín Mac Fhearaí -
vasil